Mario Benedetti, 1920 to 2009

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

First edition “The Jewish Chronicle – 19th May 2009

Revised edition: Friday 16th January 2026

Benedetti died at his home in Montevideo on Sunday, 17th May 2009, at the age of eighty-eight. With his passing, Latin America loses one of its most prolific and affectionately regarded literary voices of the postwar era. He was a figure whose work spanned more than eighty volumes across poetry, fiction, essays, drama, and journalism. His work captured the quotidian rhythms of urban life, the ache of exile, and the stubborn commitments of the left. He wrote with an unpretentious directness that endeared him to generations of readers.

Benedetti was born on 14 September 1920. His birthplace was the modest cattle town of Paso de los Toros, in the department of Tacuarembó. His parents were of Italian descent. His father, Brenno, was a winemaker of pharmaceutical and chemical products. Benedetti’s early life was shaped by the familiar Latin American narrative of sudden downward mobility. A swindle that bankrupted the family business forced the family to move to Montevideo when he was four. There, amid straitened circumstances, he attended the Deutsche Schule for primary education. He acquired a working knowledge of German at the school. This later enabled him to become the first Uruguayan translator of Kafka. Economic necessity curtailed his formal schooling.

He was self-taught thereafter. He took up shorthand and cycled through an eclectic series of occupations: stenographer, bookseller, cashier, accountant, broadcaster. All the while, he nurtured an early ambition to write. His literary debut came in 1945 with the poems of La víspera indeleble. However, it was the 1956 collection Poemas de la oficina that announced his distinctive gift. This was a sympathetic, wry chronicle of the clerical and petit-bourgeois world of Montevideo’s civil servants. He rendered their lives, hedged about by routine and modest aspiration, with an empathy that avoided condescension. The book sold out in fifteen days. Subsequent works include the bestselling novel La tregua (1960, memorably filmed in 1974). These works consolidated his reputation as the most Montevidean of Uruguayan authors. He became a chronicler of middle-class frustrations, quiet erosions of dignity, and the small, persistent dramas of everyday existence. Benedetti’s trajectory was inseparable from the political turbulence of his time.

He was a committed leftist. He contributed to the influential weekly Marcha for decades. He served as literary director from 1954 until the military closed it in 1973. He championed the Cuban Revolution. He helped organise Uruguay’s Broad Front coalition in 1971. He wrote with unflinching clarity about social injustice and cultural dependency. The 1973 coup drove him into a twelve-year exile. It took him first to Buenos Aires, where right-wing death squads soon forced him onward. Then he went to Lima, facing detention and deportation. His journey continued to Havana, Madrid, and Palma de Mallorca. His wife Luz López Alegre stayed in Uruguay. She cared for their mothers. This separation deepened the themes of rupture in his later poetry. It also heightened feelings of longing. These themes appear in works like Viento del exilio (1981) and La casa y el ladrillo (1977). It also influenced his fiction.

He returned in 1985 after the restoration of democracy. He resumed residence in Montevideo. He spent winters in Madrid to escape the cold that aggravated his asthma. In his final decades, he continued to publish prolifically. He released volumes of verse. Some examples include Insomnios y duermevelas (2002) and Vivir adrede (2007). He also published stories and reflections. He maintained the conversational tone, ironic humour, and political lucidity that defined his oeuvre. Critics have sometimes judged his work more popular than formally innovative. Yet, its accessibility proved a strength. His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages and set to music. His novels were adapted for the screen and stage. His voice remains a touchstone for readers who value literature’s ability to speak plainly of love, resistance, and human solidarity.

Benedetti’s death, following prolonged respiratory and intestinal difficulties, prompted an outpouring of tributes across the Spanish-speaking world. Huge crowds gathered to lay flowers, poems, and pencils at his wake. This was a poignant tribute to the writer. In one of his last poems, he had wryly instructed that a Biro be placed in his coffin. In an era when Latin American literature was dominated by the baroque experiments of the Boom, Benedetti offered something complementary. He presented a literature of proximity. It captured the street corner and the office corridor. It reflected the lover’s whisper and the dissident’s murmur. His legacy endures in the sheer volume of his output. It also resides in the quiet conviction that words, used without pretension, can still matter.

Although relatively little known in the English-speaking world, Benedetti was widely appreciated in the Spanish-speaking world. He authored over eighty books. These included poetry, novels, short stories, and essays. He also wrote screenplays. He was awarded the Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana in 1999. He received the Premio Iberoamericano José Martí in 2001. He was also honoured with the Premio Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in 2005.

Benedetti had a series of jobs. He started his literary life in 1945. At that time, he joined the staff of Marcha, a Uruguayan magazine. There, he worked alongside Juan Carlos Onetti and Carlos Quijano. Both were well-known writers in Latin America and Spain. The following year, he married Luz López Alegre, his companion and the great love of his life.

After the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, Benedetti was forced into exile. This exile lasted for 10 years. He returned to his native country in March of 1983. In that time in exile, he lived in various places, including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Spain. Two years later, the popular Catalan singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat recorded an album. This album was groundbreaking. It was called El sur también existe (The south also exists). It was a collection of Benedetti’s poems set to music. The poet personally collaborated in its making.

Of his literary output, perhaps the work that really stands out are his early titles. Montevideanos (1959) is one of these titles. It describes the life of civil servants in the Uruguayan capital, highlighting their sense of hierarchy and morals. La tregua (1960) is among his novels. It was adapted for theater, radio, and television. It was also made into a film in 1974. Gracias por el fuego (1963) was also adapted for film. In 1971 he published El cumpleaños de Juan Ángel (1971), a novel in verse. Its critical purpose is to reveal characters and the state of affairs. These aspects would expose the mediocrity of bourgeois values in an urban context.

In parallel, Benedetti developed a reputation for his outstanding work as a poet. He collected, expanded, and edited an anthology of poetry titled Inventory. This collection includes representative titles. Examples include Poemas de la oficina (1956) and Próximo prójimo (1965). Another is A ras de sueño, which was published in 1967. In 1981, he wrote Geografías. This book was inspired by the motivation behind exile. It brought together stories and poems in one masterful work of literature.

In 1975, Benedetti’s novel La tregua (The Truce) was made into a film. The film was subsequently nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. He later also collaborated with Daniel Viglietti, a Uruguayan singer-songwriter, on the album A dos voces.

Benedetti had always been politically aware. In January 2006, he was to join other distinguished figures. These included Gabriel García Márquez, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Monsiváis, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Pablo Milanés, Mayra Montero, and Ana Lydia Vega. They planned to demand Puerto Rico’s sovereignty.

I had the good fortune to meet Benedetti several times. This happened when I lived in Spain during the eighties and early nineties. After 1983, Benedetti divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid. He was a generous, warm and modest person, who loved to share time with his readers. Many people attribute his widespread literary success to his discretion. They admire his straightforward manner. His direct approach to connecting with and communicating with his readers also contributed to his success.

It was very easy to understand his significance through his literature. Conversations with the man himself reinforced this understanding. This is why he became one of the most representative of Latin American writers. This was a generation politically committed to the Cuban Revolution and Latin America. This also led to his recognition by the Latin American left.

Saramago praised Benedetti’s literary excellence and humanity. He admired Benedetti’s ability to communicate with many people. Saramago also lamented the loss of a friend and a brother. “He always held the ingenuous idea that you can postpone the inevitable,” Saramago said. “But we cannot. When the inevitable arrives, as with Mario Benedetti, it’s very hard.” Saramago also praised the diversity of Benedetti’s works. “He wrote everything. He had an extraordinary capacity for work. With his genius, his talent, and courage, we can say that it has been very beautiful work”.

The Spanish poet José Manuel Caballero Bonald reacted to the news of Benedetti’s death. He declared that Benedetti had “united poetry and history in a very skilful and intelligent form.” He also noted that an outstanding aspect of his work was its social critique. This critique is powerfully underscored by its intelligence.

His last published work was a book of poems titled Testigo de uno mismo (One’s Own Witness). It came out last August. Just before his death, Benedetti was working on a new book of poetry. Its working title was Biografía para encontrarme (Biography to find myself).

To paraphrase the words of Saramago, perhaps the greatest thing about Benedetti is his writing. He was the poet who best represented his people’s genuine voice. He was a person for whom all language and all of its words were poetic. He tirelessly and persistently sought a meaning, a purpose, and a sense of life. He looked for these elements in the human condition, on the planet, and in the country. He also searched in the towns and villages, at home, and in collective and popular action. In other words, Benedetti was a universal poet, a poet for all humanity, and a truly extraordinary human being.

Mario Benedetti : 14 de septiembre de 1920, Paso de los Toros – 17 de mayo de 2009